Bibliophagy
The term bibliophagy (from the Greek βιβλίον biblíon "book" and φαγεῖν phageín "eat" or from φάγος phagos "eater") mostly metaphorically denotes the consumption, eating, devouring of books or the need for them by people.
The idea is u. a. This explains that reading is tantamount to striving to incorporate what has been read as well as what has been written and that it finds its obvious expression in this act.
history
The literal eating of letters has also been a custom that has been known since ancient Greece and has been preserved up to the present day in products such as Russian bread , alphabet cake and alphabet soup . In religious folk medicine, so-called food slips provided with text were widespread until the 20th century .
Examples
Examples of bibliophagy in literature are the prophet John and the librarian Jorge von Burgos from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose .
See also
literature
- Onésyme Durocher (= Octave Delepierre ): De la bibliophagie. London 1866 (Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, Volume 10). ( online )
- Michael Schödlbauer : Psyche – Logos – Reading Circle. A conversation with Martin Heidegger himself. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000 (Epistemata. Series Literary Studies, Volume 308), ISBN 3-8260-1773-0 . ( Section "Bibliophagy", pp. 633–638. )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kirsten Dickhaut: Till Eulenspiegel did not eat books. François Forestier: La Manducation http://parapluie.de/archiv/sprung/till/
- ↑ Cf. for example Franz Dornseiff : The alphabet in mysticism and magic. , Berlin / Leipzig 1922 (Studies on the History of the Ancient World View and Greek Science, Issue 7); here Otto Weinreich : Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1922–1937. Grüner, Amsterdam 1973, p. 32.
- ↑ Revelation of John X.10.
- ^ Umberto Eco: Der Name der Rose , dtv Munich 1987, p. 610.